Concept Outline and Research – The Start of Something Good

My idea for a narrative driven scene was initially two things; a small forest clearing with a camp in it and a circular room, presumably in a tower, with bookshelves. In the end I decided the room would be too much work for the time allotted and the forest clearing would, ultimately, be more interesting both to make and to explore.

So I set out to figure out what the story was, what assets I would need and what the overall theme would be. I settled on a late medieval theme, with magical elements both in the camp and the forest itself.

My mindmap for the scene.

The narrative I’ve settled on is a small band of people hunting otherworldly beings, hence the silver bullets (if I can find a way to make it obvious this is what it is). At some point during the night the camp was disturbed and everyone ran in one direction leaving an assortment of items in their wake. Whether they ran after or from something should not be clear, but a set of eyes should be seen in the trees when getting close enough.

The forest should appear ancient and magical and my idea for the magical part was to have some small, subtle, blue orbs flying around the area.

During my research I found that really, the orbs I was thinking of were quite common in fantasy and seems to have been inspired from fireflies, originally, but had the colour modified to seem mysterious. It works well, because fireflies have a warm glow to them, whereas a blue light is colder and unnatural, making the whole thing seem a little strange.

As the board shows I ended up finding the bottom middle picture and found myself liking the slight mist, the moss and the density of the trees.

The moss gives the trees and the forest floor an old look that fits nicely with the orbs’ mysterious look. The mist on top of it adds a slightly eerie look that would be really nice to have hanging in the area, possibly even for use to obscure the edge of the scene from view.

After having decided to add moss to the area I looked up details on moss growth and where it’s commonly found.

As we can see from this picture the moss seems to be growing mostly on one side (Wikipedia claims the north side, due to the south being more dry when hit by sunlight) and the area seems to be largely ever-greens.